Israel has lived the past sixty years more intensively than any other country.

Its highs – the resurrection of a two-thousand year old state in
1948, history's most lopsided military victory in 1967, and the
astonishing Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976 – have been triumphs of will
and spirit that inspire the civilized world. Its lows have been
self-imposed humiliations: unilateral retreat from Lebanon and
evacuation of Joseph's Tomb, both in 2000; retreat from Gaza in 2005;
defeat by Hizbullah in 2006; and the corpses-for-prisoners exchange
with Hizbullah last week.

An
outsider can only wonder at the contrast. How can the authors of
exhilarating victories repeatedly bring such disgrace upon themselves,
seemingly oblivious to the import of their actions?

One clue has to do with the dates. The highs took place during the
state's first three decades, the lows occurred since 2000. Something
profound has changed. The strategically brilliant but economically
deficient early state has been replaced by the reverse. Yesteryear's
spy masterminds, military geniuses, and political heavyweights have
seemingly gone into high tech, leaving the state in the hands of
corrupt, short-sighted mental midgets.

Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's
endorsed the deal on the grounds that it "will bring an end to this
painful episode," a reference to retrieving the bodies of war dead and
appeasing the hostages' families demand for closure. In themselves,
both are honorable goals, but at what price? This distortion of
priorities shows how a once-formidably strategic country has
degenerated into a supremely sentimental country, a rudderless polity
where self-absorbed egoism trumps raison d'être. Israelis, fed up with deterrence and appeasement alike, have lost their way.

Appalling as the cabinet decision was, worse yet is that neither the
Likud opposition party nor other leading public Israeli institutions
responded with rage, but generally (with some notable exceptions) sat quietly aside. Their absence reflects a Tami Steinmetz Center poll
showing that the Israeli population approves the swap by a nearly 2-1
ratio. In short, the problem extends far beyond the official class to
implicate the population at large.

On the other side, the disgraceful celebration of baby-murderer Kuntar as a national hero in Lebanon, where the government shut down to celebrate his arrival, and by the Palestinian Authority, which called him a "heroic fighter," reveals the depths of Lebanese enmity to Israel and immorality, disturbing anyone concerned with the Arab soul.

The deal has many adverse consequences. It encourages Arab terrorists to seize more Israeli soldiers, then kill them. It boosts Hizbullah's stature in Lebanon and legitimates Hizbullah internationally. It emboldens Hamas and makes a deal for its Israeli hostage more problematic. Finally, while this incident appears small compared to the Iranian nuclear issue, the two are related.

International headlines along the lines of "Israel Mourns, Hezbollah Exults" confirm the widely held but erroneous Middle Eastern view of Israel as a "spider's web"
that can be destroyed. The recent exchange may give the already
apocalyptic Iranian leadership further reason to brandish its weapons.
Worse, as Steven Plaut
notes, by equating "mass murderers of Jewish children to combat
soldiers," the exchange effectively justifies the "mass extermination
of Jews in the name of Jewish racial inferiority."

For those concerned with the welfare and security of Israel, I
propose two consolations. First, Israel remains a powerful country that
can afford mistakes; one estimate even predicts it would survive an exchange of nuclear weapons with Iran, while Iran would not.

Second, the Kuntar affair could have a surprise happy ending. A senior Israeli official
told David Bedein that, now out of jail, Israel's obligation to protect
Kuntar is terminated; on arrival in Lebanon, he became "a target for
killing. Israel will get him, and he will be killed … accounts will be
settled." Another senior official added "we cannot let this man think
that he can go unpunished for his murder of a 4-year-old girl."

Who will laugh last, Hizbullah or Israel?

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

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